Oh, how we love Olympic moms. Our fantasy version is personified in a popular series of ads produced by Proctor & Gamble, an Olympic sponsor. A montage of mothers from around the world are shown waking their sleepy little ones, cooking them breakfast, getting them to practice, and then washing, washing, washing — both dishes and clothes. The children grow bigger, the moms keep scrubbing and laundering, and by the end, the young adult athletes are swimming, running, spiking volleyballs, and acknowledging their tear-stained, now middle-aged mothers in the Olympic stands.

When the words, “The hardest job in the world is the best job in the world. Thank you, Mom,” fill the screen, I was just as misty-eyed as anyone else. But I also couldn’t help but wonder what Judy Murray would make of this stereotype of the sports mom.

Judy Murray is the mother of Andy Murray, the Scottish tennis player who lost to Roger Federer in the Wimbledon final last week and is now hoping for a gold medal at the Olympics in London later this month. Those who watched the Wimbledon match might have noticed how frequently the camera panned to Murray’s mother, her face often taut with tension as the competition unfolded. She has described the experience of watching her son play tennis as “a mixture of nausea and heart attack.”

She is not only a fixture in the stands but also a lightening rod for criticism. Judy Murray gets hate mail. She is depicted as a domineering, smothering, controlling mom whose very presence is undermining her son’s game. Boris Becker, a former Wimbledon champion, publicly condemned her last year, saying, “I just question whether a young man needs to have his mother around all the time while he’s working.” A headline in the UK Daily Record summarized: “Andy Murray won’t win a Grand Slam until he stops being a mummy’s boy and cuts ties with Judy.” David Yeoman, a self-described “business and sport behavioral strategist” told a British paper that Murray should force his mother to stay at home to improve his game. Would anyone level similar criticism at the fathers of Tiger Woods or Serena and Venus Williams and the numerous other sports dads who keep a firm hand on the professional athletic careers of their children?

It seems we love sports mothers when they are scrambling eggs, washing uniforms and driving to practice, but not when they are upset when their daughter or son plays poorly and certainly not — gasp — when they actually know something about the sport. Judy Murray was not only her son’s first tennis coach, drilling him in coordination exercises when he was a toddler, but she also now captains the British Fed Cup team. Before that she was Scotland’s national coach. And yet she has been accused of hanging on to the apron strings and acting inappropriately, common critiques for mothers who remain close to their adult sons. She was also vilified for tweeting about the good looks of one of her son’s opponents, making her, as one blogger put it, “the Most Embarrassing Old Dear of the Year.”

The point is not that Judy Murray is perfect, but that she doesn’t fit the image we’ve created of the sainted athlete mom. Recently Matt Lauer interviewed Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte and his mom, Ileana, who also coached her son when he was younger. When Lauer noted how proud she must be of her son’s improvement, Ms. Lochte said, “Every time he swam in a big meet he swam best times, except Beijing in the first two races, where…” But Lauer cut her off, evidently deciding that nobody wants to hear what his former coach actually has to say about his swimming. Instead he cut to a spokesman for Proctor & Gamble, who said she was “super-excited” to announce that the company was going to help pay families’ way to the London Olympics, and would also offer athletes’ moms the chance to get their hair done and have makeovers. Lauer exclaimed that Mrs. Lochte could get fresh mascara every time she cried in the stands.

Murray's mom gets a lot of flack because up until recently he would get really pouty on the court. He's notorious for throwing temper tantrums and acting like a spoiled punk. And his game was stale. So i think people are reacting more to the fact that she raised a spoiled kid smothered by entitlement. And people have complained about sharapova's dad, the williams' sisters' dad, etc. But i do agree with you about matt lauer. chauvinist.

I'm hardly the type who seeks to find sexism everywhere, but it seems incredibly reductionist that so many people think mother should be home washing clothes instead of in the stands supporting her son. Many pro athletes' parents attend their children's games - why should Murray's be any different?

As a decent tennis player who has bona fide tennis parents and watches a lot of professional tennis, I can tell you that this stereotype is almost completely unfounded. Maybe your son benefits from having his mother around him all the time (I'm assuming that's why you wrote the book about "why keeping our sons close makes them stronger"), but we have to respect that people are different. Since she's the captain of the British Fed Cup team, she probably puts a lot of pressure on him to win, particularly because he's the first remotely successful British player in a looong time.

Tiger Woods, the Williams sisters, and other great athletes don't face this amount of criticism regarding their parents because they've pretty much always been wildly successful, whereas Murray is perceived as having a lot of potential and the pressure for him to win is insane. His fans are worried that if he doesn't break into the next level soon at 25 years old, he never will because the younger, more physically fit players will start to take over. So they try to identify any possible factors that are holding him back, which could quite possibly include his mother watching his matches.

The point is, calling this criticism a stereotype is grossly oversimplified and is probably more due to your slightly biased perception than reality.

keep a firm hand on the professional athletic careers of their children?"

Absolutely. In order for children to become true adults, dads (and moms) must back off and let their sons and daughters set their own course. The children won't always soar to new heights with this freedom (Tiger), but most of us see independence as a requirement for full adult status. By the age of 25, an adult should be able to make their own way in the world. If they can't, it's perceived as a sign of weakness.